Eternal Summers

Très Oui, Overlake

Eternal Summers

The critically acclaimed anthemic dream pop and post punk band, Eternal Summers are thrilled to announce their new studio album Every Day It Feels I’m Dying…, to be released on May 4th on Nevado Music.

Nicole Yun, from the band says, “The combination of straightforward love lyrics and synth based sugary pop is a new realm for the band. This was the last song to come together on the album, and proved to be a really enjoyable experiment into new sounds and styles. It was so fun and pressure free to record a song like this that we all almost wrote it off like a joke or a song we could keep for our own amusement. I'm glad it made it to the record. People need some joy and fun these days.”

With a tempered song writing process that has spanned over two years, the group finds themselves documenting the many ways that one can cope with disappointment, fear, loss of control, loneliness and depression. The result is 2018’s Every Day It Feels Like I’m Dying…

Though the topics range from emotional numbness to tragedy, to calling out the ugly complacency within one’s self, the musical influences are hopeful, breezy, and even rollicking. Taking influence from Japanese, French and Swedish pop, bossa nova and jazz, the trio still finds a way to meld these new influences into their specific breed of melodic fuzz pop.

Having formed in 2009, Eternal Summers has now been operating as the trio of Nicole Yun, Daniel Cundiff and Jonathan Woods longer then they did as a duo without Jonathan. Long gone are the days of the Roanoke based collective known as the Magic Twig Community that saw the handful of like-minded indie artists working together; but what has grown in place is a band that stands on its own, in the words of All Music, “The kind that other bands will look to for inspiration 20 years later.”

With several previous releases, there has already been a lot said about Eternal Summers music. From the crafty minimalism on their debut Silver, to the dream punk sheen on 2012’s breakout Correct Behavior, to the guitar driven power on The Drop Beneath, the evolution of Eternal Summers marks a band that embraces both anthemic rock and bittersweet ballads - a band that is grounded in jangle pop but with an added depth that rewards on repeated listens.

Eternal Summers never ending tour cycle has seen them play with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Surfer Blood, The Presidents of the United States of America, Cheatahs, We are Scientists, Nada Surf, amongst others.

Très Oui

Overlake

When they’re not incessantly waxing philosophical about the musical merits of both MBV and GBV, or working to contribute new innovations to vegan cuisine, or proofreading poorly-written articles in pharmaceutical catalogs on their own time, Overlake is busy honing their own unique brand of noisy dreampop, drawing from such stalwart influences as Dinosaur Jr, Slowdive, and Hoboken’s own Yo La Tengo, a Bar/None alumnus!

They formed in the winter of 2012 while Tom and Lysa were playing in local five-piece hard-rock outfit, WJ and the Sweet Sacrifice. During practices, while the rest of the band would take smoke breaks (neither Tom or Lysa smoke), they would stay behind and play on whatever various instruments were set up and lying around, all the while discovering a musical kinship together. Serendipity struck when they met drummer Nick D’Amore at a mutual friend’s birthday party in Downtown JC in early 2015, only after enduring a seemingly endless Spinal Tap-like run of both hopeful permanents and fill-ins.

Overlake’s sound can only be described as massive, with Barrett’s delay-drenched guitar and whispery, laconic voice backed by the solid coupling of Opfer’s driving basslines and angelic backing vocals, along with D’Amore’s propulsive drum work. They’ve spent the last few years touring throughout the U.S., delighting audiences with their all-enveloping wall of sound, most of the time with their amplifiers draped in netted Christmas lights.

Their new record, Fall, was recorded and co-produced by Cheap Trick-obsessive Tom Beaujour (Nada Surf, Jennifer O’Connor). Unlike previous recordings, where Barrett would play all the drums, they went into the studio a well-oiled apparatus. What they left with was a more expansive collection of songs, their trademark sonics augmented by appearances of sparse piano and elegiac, mournful violin, courtesy of the incomparable Claudia Chopek.

Notes bend, shimmer, and boomerang all throughout the course of Fall, as do the lyrical sentiments. Loving glances turn into sources of pain, which mutate into some form of cautious optimism. Intimacy is fraught, its beauty fleeting. A period makes way for a question mark, which becomes an ellipsis. What Fall greatly captures is how these supposed stages don’t always occur in any logical order, and can make reoccurring appearances.